Emmanuel Macron defends his record without formalizing his presidential candidacy

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The French head of state Emmanuel Macron gave a long interview on TF1 and LCI on Wednesday evening. A few months before the presidential election, he defended his record and hinted at his desire to stay at the Élysée without, however, formalizing his candidacy for a new term.

From economic reforms to Covid-19 via the “yellow vests”, Emmanuel Macron defended, Wednesday, December 15 on TF1 and LCI, the results of his five-year term. While painting a positive picture of his action, the Head of State admitted to having made some mistakes and, above all, “having learned” from the various crises he has faced since 2017.

Four months before the first round of the presidential election, on April 10, Emmanuel Macron did not respond, as expected, to the urgent calls from the oppositions to finally enter the race and stop campaigning “without saying it”.

“Some are in the countryside, but your servant: no”, he assures us. But “I never thought that we could, in five years, do everything”, he adds, wishing to “continue to project” and “keep vision” to “say: I plan the country at 10 years “.

Relaunched several times on his possible candidacy, he assures that he is not “today in the situation to answer this question, both in view of the country (and) in view of myself”. “The French chose me (in 2017) and I was not known. We got to know each other, I was not familiar with our compatriots”, recognizes the young president, who will celebrate his 44 years next Tuesday.

“There is someone who decides, I assume”, he replies when questioned by journalists Audrey Crespo-Mara of TF1 and Darius Rochebin of LCI on his way of presiding, often described as “Jupiterian”. But he also claims to work in “collegiality”, citing the many Covid defense councils organized since the start of the health crisis almost two years ago.

“Not the law of the jungle”

He therefore asks “the right not to be the caricature in which we want (him) to lock him”, like those of president disconnected from the real life of the French or president of the rich. “I have never been that! (…) My values ​​are not those of a president of the rich”, he insists.

Asked about his “little phrases” polemics at the start of the five-year term, he admits that he would not repeat them again, even if they showed that he had “come to power with a form of vitality” and “a desire to shake up”. “I have acquired, I think I can say it, a lot more respect for everyone,” he says.

Elected in 2017 with the promise of going beyond the right-left divide, Emmanuel Macron explains that his project was built on “the triptych of liberating / protecting / unifying”. “I do not believe in savagery, I am not for the law of the jungle! I am for the responsibility, the merit, but also the mutual aid and the solidarity when the hard knocks are there”, he explains. .

Emmanuel Macron thus justifies the “whatever the cost” put in place in 2020 after the explosion of the pandemic. This policy was possible “because we had a credibility, a solidity, linked to the reforms of the labor market, to the rebuilt attractiveness”.

Stopped by the health crisis, the pension reform will have to be relaunched, he said, but by going “towards a simplified system” with “roughly three major schemes”, for the public service, for private employees and for the self-employed. He admitted that reducing them from 42 to just one, as he initially intended, was “too anxiety-provoking”.

Opponents reassembled

This program entitled “Where is France going?”, Recorded on Sunday in the hall of the Elysee, infuriated opponents and supporters of the president less than four months before the presidential election. The opposition denounced an attack on the “fairness” of speaking time while the majority defended the president’s right to explain himself to the French.

Several contenders for the Elysee have appealed to the arbitrator, entering the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA).

With AFP